The Quarry is a site for experiments in building and architecture, creative practices, education and technology. The rehabilitation of the Quarry underpins all actions and activities on site. We learn through the actions of rehabilitation — It is not only a goal, it is an ongoing process.
Introduction
We have been working with the Quarry for eight years. It’s one of three projects we have been running for over a decade, all of which focus on site- and place-based caretaking, maintenance, and rehabilitation. Sites that enable experimentation across a range of creative practices have always been interesting to us, and the Quarry is an expansion of these ideas.
Quarrying represents a cultural attitude towards land that has had destructive effects on the environment. We are interested in reframing these existing conditions as unique opportunities and as starting points for different kinds of conversations. By proposing alternative modes of rehabilitation, we aim to challenge the perception that land must be returned to a fixed, pre-extraction state. This view misrepresents environments and ecologies as static, and by extension, separates agency and acts of care from the work of rehabilitation.
We are particularly interested in collaborating on projects and programs that explore alternative modes of rehabilitation. Responsive education — learning that emerges from being within a site — allows for a type of rehabilitation that we think is unique. Live design projects align well with our goals of rehabilitation because we are interested in many voices and many experiences shaping what rehabilitation can be. People working on projects and maintaining a sustained presence on site are themselves acts of care: walking the site, weeding, cleaning, making, and researching. Bringing attention to the site and its possibilities has enabled a broader appreciation of where specific care might be needed.
An important part of this project in particular is the reuse of material that is otherwise destined for landfill. This is material that has been sourced from temporary architecture projects, so as architects, we believe we have a responsibility to consider its ongoing lives. Deconstruction, as much as construction, is integral to any design and building project that happens at the Quarry. This includes processes of delaminating and pulling apart materials — reducing forms and structures into their component parts.
When we work with groups at the Quarry, we don’t take on the role of a project leader who directs and instructs. Instead, we aim to set up an environment where we are equal members of a group, working alongside participants who are there. This helps give agency to others — they see us doing things, and through that, feel invited to contribute too. We think collaboration is key to any thoughtful and successful design and construction process. Engaging with projects on site, and understanding one’s place and capacity to advocate for ideas in a thoughtful way, is an important part of the project.
What’s vital for us in the context of design and building projects at the Quarry is that people return to the site and engage with these projects over time. We resist the inclination to view architecture only in its purest form and final state — instead, we’re interested in its lived reality. Communities form through and around these projects, and that ongoing engagement is central to what the Quarry represents.
– Ross Brewin, MADA Department of Architecture at Monash University
“The return of extensive disturbed land to a stable, productive and self-sustaining condition may take quite a long period of time.”
—Hannan, JC 1984 ‘Mine Rehabilitation: A Handbook for the Coal Mining Industry’.
Site Information
Since 2016 These Are The Projects We Do Together has been working with an 86,000 sq metre Arkose Sandstone quarry in the Otway Ranges, within the traditional lands of the Gadubanud People. Located on the outskirts of the township of Beech Forest, the quarry sits on an east-west ridge line, 550 meters above sea level within a cool temperate rainforest climate.
The Quarry has been in operation since the late 19th century, providing crushed sandstone for road and rail building, as well as occasionally providing rock material for landscaping and building projects. The Quarry is still under licence and currently going through rehabilitation.
Project Background
As a post-extractive landscape, the Quarry requires rehabilitation. Typically, such sites are remediated to a ‘renaturalised’ state through either flooding or filling.
These Are The Projects We Do Together explores rehabilitation as a creative process that is open-ended and involves bringing together different communities through a range of projects that build upon core rehabilitation tasks.
These tasks in summary involve making landforms stable and safe, removing invasive species while improving soil conditions, and testing and developing a long-term vision for the site. As part of testing long-term uses, a range of temporary facilities currently accommodates study and research groups, creative projects and residency programs.
By proposing an alternate mode of rehabilitation we seek to question economic conventions of valuing land as a commodity to be used until exhausted. The future requires rehabilitation: Make a clearing, ask questions, take care.
“School is not a place for the safe enclosure of lessons. School is an amplifier for the world. Lessons are not fixed ahead of time, or they become rules. The Syllabus is written after the course ends. The course is endless. The curriculum emerges out of the energy and relationships in the space and the world. It emerges out of the encounters in the world. It emerges out of the social contracts for how we negotiate and engage with each other in the world. It emerges out of the questions and feelings, empathy, the politics of experimentation, perceptual awareness, the responsibility of taking risks and compassion. A philosophy of care.”
—Eliasson, O 2016 ‘From The Past With Love’ in Pais, AP, Strauss, C (eds). ‘Slow Reader’, Valiz NL.
“Creative practice has the role to try to bring closer the conditions in which we would like to live, and to try to dismantle the cultural apparatus that sustains the system, creating spaces of reclamation, re-appropriation and maybe eventual confrontation where tension and friction can play out in an interesting way, by serving as points of departure for new scenarios.”
—Garcia-Dory, F 2016 ‘A Different Rhythum’ in Pais, AP, Strauss, C (eds). ‘Slow Reader’, Valiz, NL.
Propose a project
The Quarry is taking applications for projects throughout 2024 and 2025.
We are particularly interested in accommodating and supporting projects that relate specifically to site rehabilitation, that work with the geology and form of the post-extractive landscape, that consider the history of the region, and that directly engage with local communities.
Please fill out a short form detailing what you want to do and we will be in contact shortly.
“In the most general sense, care is a species activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we may live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web.”
—Tronto, JC 2015 ‘Who Cares?: How to Reshape a Democratic Politics’, Cornell University Press, NY.
The Quarry is a site for experiments in building and architecture, creative practices, education and technology. The rehabilitation of the Quarry underpins all actions and activities on site. We learn through the actions of rehabilitation — It is not only a goal, it is an ongoing process.
Site Information
Since 2016 These Are The Projects We Do Together has been working with an 86,000 sq metre Arkose Sandstone quarry in the Otway Ranges, within the traditional lands of the Gadubanud People. Located on the outskirts of the township of Beech Forest, the quarry sits on an east-west ridge line, 550 meters above sea level within a cool temperate rainforest climate.
The Quarry has been in operation since the late 19th century, providing crushed sandstone for road and rail building, as well as occasionally providing rock material for landscaping and building projects. The Quarry is still under licence and currently going through rehabilitation.
“The return of extensive disturbed land to a stable, productive and self-sustaining condition may take quite a long period of time.”
—Hannan, JC 1984 ‘Mine Rehabilitation: A Handbook for the Coal Mining Industry’.
Project Background
As a post-extractive landscape, the Quarry requires rehabilitation. Typically, such sites are remediated to a ‘renaturalised’ state through either flooding or filling.
These Are The Projects We Do Together explores rehabilitation as a creative process that is open-ended and involves bringing together different communities through a range of projects that build upon core rehabilitation tasks.
These tasks in summary involve making landforms stable and safe, removing invasive species while improving soil conditions, and testing and developing a long-term vision for the site. As part of testing long-term uses, a range of temporary facilities currently accommodates study and research groups, creative projects and residency programs.
By proposing an alternate mode of rehabilitation we seek to question economic conventions of valuing land as a commodity to be used until exhausted. The future requires rehabilitation: Make a clearing, ask questions, take care.
“School is not a place for the safe enclosure of lessons. School is an amplifier for the world. Lessons are not fixed ahead of time, or they become rules. The Syllabus is written after the course ends. The course is endless. The curriculum emerges out of the energy and relationships in the space and the world. It emerges out of the encounters in the world. It emerges out of the social contracts for how we negotiate and engage with each other in the world. It emerges out of the questions and feelings, empathy, the politics of experimentation, perceptual awareness, the responsibility of taking risks and compassion. A philosophy of care.”
—Eliasson, O 2016 ‘From The Past With Love’ in Pais, AP, Strauss, C (eds). ‘Slow Reader’, Valiz NL.
“Creative practice has the role to try to bring closer the conditions in which we would like to live, and to try to dismantle the cultural apparatus that sustains the system, creating spaces of reclamation, re-appropriation and maybe eventual confrontation where tension and friction can play out in an interesting way, by serving as points of departure for new scenarios.”
—Garcia-Dory, F 2016 ‘A Different Rhythum’ in Pais, AP, Strauss, C (eds). ‘Slow Reader’, Valiz, NL.
Propose a project
The Quarry is taking applications for projects throughout 2024 and 2025.
We are particularly interested in accommodating and supporting projects that relate specifically to site rehabilitation, that work with the geology and form of the post-extractive landscape, that consider the history of the region, and that directly engage with local communities.
Please fill out a short form detailing what you want to do and we will be in contact shortly.
“In the most general sense, care is a species activity that includes everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we may live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web.”
—Tronto, JC 2015 ‘Who Cares?: How to Reshape a Democratic Politics’, Cornell University Press, NY.
We respectfully acknowledge the Gadubanud People as original inhabitants of the area now known as the Otway plains and ranges. We respectfully acknowledge elders – past, present and emerging. We extend our deepest respects to all First Nations peoples. In the context of the work we do, we express gratitude for our shared connection through place, to the oldest continuing cultures on earth.
The Quarry is operated and managed by These Are The Projects We Do Together.
We respectfully acknowledge the Gadubanud People as original inhabitants of the area now known as the Otway plains and ranges. We respectfully acknowledge elders – past, present and emerging. We extend our deepest respects to all First Nations peoples. In the context of the work we do, we express gratitude for our shared connection through place, to the oldest continuing cultures on earth.
The Quarry is operated and managed by These Are The Projects We Do Together.